I was wondering if I could ask you a question. Please allow me to revive this thread.

His last words were "I love you". <--- It seems fine to me. But I have no idea if the following sentences sound ok.

a) His last word was "ok".b) His last words were, "ok".c) His last words was "ok".d) His last words were, only "ok".e) His last words were, actually it was only a word, "ok"......z) He only said "ok" as his last words.

(The listener has been already informed about his death.) (The dead guy was known as a strange person.)

Can I convey the meaning by using one of those sentences? I'm not a last word freak though.Thank you.

Recently, a forum member's opinion made me feel I needed to study the basic English grammar again. Then, I took a look at a textbook for beginners. The first example sentences in the book were:

"This is a pen.""These are pens."

I found out that I didn't understand the concept of the plural properly.I thought, maybe wrongly, like this:

If I deliberately say: These are pen.I could mean: These are some products that each of them is usually called a pen.

If I deliberately say: It is pens.I could mean: It is a group comprised of some pens.

Then, I got hopelessly lost. I looked for some learning materials for my questions in vain. In the course of the search, I came across the expressions "a last word in an argument" and "someone's last words".The former means a group of words, not a single word, and the latter also means a group of words. But the meanings of those two expressions are different. Because they are idiomatic expressions. I understand the concept. However, what would happen if the group was comprised of just one single word? The latter can maintain the original meaning or not? That is my question.Any advice would be highly appreciated. If I'm totally wrong, please just tell me so.

NileCat wrote:I was wondering if I could ask you a question. Please allow me to revive this thread.

His last words were "I love you". <--- It seems fine to me. But I have no idea if the following sentences sound ok.

a) His last word was "ok".b) His last words were, "ok".c) His last words was "ok".d) His last words were, only "ok".e) His last words were, actually it was only a word, "ok"......z) He only said "ok" as his last words.

Wow, this is a really difficult question.The discrepency between singular and plural makes all of them seem off. I would say that while they all sound kind of weird, e is the best of a bad lot.

I would probably rephrase it all together and say something like: "The last thing he said before he died was "ok"."

I think also there may be a problem here because "last words" can be taken as sort of idiomatic; I don't see anything wrong with (d) because I read that as "last words" being taken not necessarily as literally multiple words, but just the concept of last words.

I agree with Yudan about the phrase having become somewhat idiomatic. While (a) is obviously grammatically correct, it does sound a bit strange because the phrase is 'last words', not 'last word'. If you assume that 'last words' has become so much of a set phrase that it doesn't necessarily have to be the case anymore that more than one word is spoken, (b) would also be ok. In fact, thinking about it, to me (b) probably sounds better than (a). (c) sounds incorrect because of the incongruence in number between the verb and the subject.

I agree with Becki though that if you want to avoid changing the 'idiom', it's probably best to rephrase the sentence altogether.

Interesting. Of course this also made me think of the phrase, "He always has to have the last word." which is, of course, talking about an entirely different kind of last word.

But maybe not, as the last word can be the final word of agreement as well. So this could also be an excerpt from a discussion about a guy that always has to have the last word in an argument. Who literally won't shut up until the other person gives up and remains silent.

a - this is wrong for punctuation reasons and may be a simple typo on NileCat's part.

So if I saw this on a test because of the missing comma in a, I'd choose e. But by ear, a is the best sounding. e- the change of emphasis to "words were" to "a word" does happen, but most people if emphasizing the singular would stress the "a" or use "one" instead. E.g, "His last words were, actually it was only one word, 'ok'." or "His last words were, actually it was only a word, 'ok'." So without the stress in e, and with a comma in a, I'd choose a.